Hungary, the EU and Russia’s War Against Ukraine: The Changing Dynamics of EU Foreign Policymaking

Abstract

AbstractThe Hungarian government led by the populist radical right (PRR) Fidesz party, which came to power in 2010, soon gained a reputation for reorganizing domestic state institutions in line with its illiberal political agenda. This triggered a process of democratic backsliding that brought Hungary in growing conflict with the EU, which cumulated in the Commission triggering the EU’s new conditionality mechanism against Hungary in April 2022. Applying a model of cross-sectoral bargaining, this article argues that the EU’s conflict with Hungary over democratic backsliding and rule of law issues has increasingly been linked to foreign policy matters, most notably the EU’s aid package to Ukraine. While negotiations in the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) have long been considered as taking place in an ‘insulated setting’, our findings point to a growing instrumentalization of foreign policy for achieving gains in intra-EU politics. On a more general level, this speaks to broader arguments related to the populist ‘domestication’ of foreign policy.